Dawn Eden reviews Cathleen Falsani’s new book:

(Falsani is religion columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times)

Do cultural icons really have something special to teach us about faith — something we couldn’t learn from interviews with people whose names don’t sell books? Ms. Falsani apparently thinks so. As a writer, she has a fine eye for environmental detail, seamlessly drawing the reader into each interview. If she had no higher aspiration than to entertain, "The God Factor" would succeed as a gently voyeuristic look at the beliefs of high achievers. But she intends to "learn something from each … that would enliven and enrich my own faith," something that she can "share."

Ms. Falsani clearly has a favorite celebrity whose thoughts she is most eager to share: U2’s Bono. The singer takes American Christians to task for not doing enough to fight AIDS in Africa while "millions of children and millions of lives" are being lost.

Some of the Bono chapter originally appeared in Ms. Falsani’s glowing cover story about the singer in Christianity Today in 2003. The article prompted the magazine to take the unusual step of responding with an editorial, blistering the non-churchgoing singer’s ignorance of the faithful’s response to the epidemic. "Never mind that many Christians were bringing relief to suffering Africans in the same decade that U2 poured millions into its bloated Zoo TV and PopMart tours (keeping the latter on the road cost $1.3 million a week)."

Ms. Falsani mentions the editorial, calling it "painful to read." But she sidesteps an issue that her readers might like to have seen addressed: the disconnect between her interviewees’ words and their actions.

While half of all Americans attend worship services regularly, only 10 of the 32 celebrities interviewed for "The God Factor" do. God is not so much the foundation of their lives as simply one factor in them. In any event, these folks tend to address spiritual matters in their own celebrity way. Mr. Lynch, for example, practices transcendental meditation and claims to be a "yogic flier." Jazz musician Kurt Elling says that he belongs to "The Church of the Living Swing."